All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

69 Briggs was born in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire in 1862. The family moved to Lancashire and having qualified for the county young Briggs made his debut for them in 1879, coincidentally against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge. By 1900 he had taken nine wickets in an innings three times. He had come closest to an all-ten for Lord Londesborough’s XI against the 1890 Australians when the one wicket to evade him was a run-out. Lancashire nearly won the Championship in 1900 and it was not until mid-August that it became clear that they would have to settle for second place to a Yorkshire team that went through the season undefeated. Worcestershire on the other hand were not a strong team. Admitted to the first-class ranks the previous season they finished 12th out of 15 in the Championship, managing only three wins. Not surprisingly Old Trafford had experienced a few changes since Hickton’s all-ten there in 1870. It was now surrounded by spiked railings to stop the crowds spilling onto the ground, new stands had been added, there was a new scoreboard, and most noticeably there was a new pavilion, completed in 1895 at a cost of nearly £10,000. The pavilion had three bathrooms for the amateurs and one for the professionals! At least the professionals now changed in the same pavilion as the amateurs, rather than in their own more rudimentary accommodation elsewhere on the ground, even if it was two more years before paid and unpaid walked out side by side. The first day, Thursday 24 May, was a holiday for the Queen’s birthday, and there were some 7,000 present. It was perhaps remarkable that Briggs was playing at all. On the evening of the first day of the Headingley Test at the end of June the previous season the members of both the England and Australia teams had gone to the music hall. At about 10.15 Briggs, sitting in the front row, had a violent epileptic fit. He was admitted to Cheadle Asylum where he had remained until the end of March. At the end of May 1900 the papers were reporting details of the Relief of Mafeking a few days earlier and this no doubt put the crowd in a good humour. Recovered from his illness, Briggs had not yet done a lot of bowling. However, heavy showers followed by sunshine provided him with helpful conditions which, opening the bowling, he wasted no time in exploiting. Henry Foster, the Worcestershire captain and their top run- scorer during the season, went for a duck and was quickly followed by Frederick Bowley (who played for the county until 1923, by which time he was their leading run-scorer with over 20,000 runs) and by Ted Arnold, the first Worcestershire player to achieve the season’s double. Briggs’ opening partner was medium pacer Albert Hallam. The following season Hallam would move to the county of his birth and in 1907 he and Tom Wass would bowl Nottinghamshire to their first Championship title since the great days of the 1880s. Extraordinarily the pair shared 298 wickets while John Gunn, the next most successful bowler, took 25. Six for three wasn’t a promising start for Worcestershire. Aston Villa’s England football international George Wheldon, and W.H.Hill, playing Johnny Briggs